Night sky photos, landscaping, debt, and puppies #introduceyourself

Hi there! My name is Eric and I'm a night owl and early bird rolled into one. I wake up way too early in the morning just so I can have a cup of coffee and stare out my back window. I have a tiny back yard but I love landscaping, and I've been watching my trees come in since I planted them myself. When we moved in, it was a blank canvas, just an empty dirt lot.

I mentioned I'm also a night owl, I stay up way too late and get up at odd hours to look at the stars, or to try to photograph interesting night sky objects.

I don't have very good gear for astrophotography, but I like to try to push the limits with what I have. Try to get better and better photos with technique and not just drop a lot of money on the best scope and camera available. Needless to say, I end up with a lot of fuzzy gray blobs in my photos, but every now and then I get something pretty neat.

Below is the October 8, 2014 total lunar eclipse from Indiana, USA. This is my best photo (composite) I've ever done. I have a print of this framed in the living room. :)

I'm also self-taught in personal finance because I accumulated $19,000 in credit card debt in college (on top of student loans) and had to learn the mindset that comes along with saving and investing. I'm now credit card debt free, and working on my retirement. I'm only 33, but I attend a lot of the retirement workshops and benefits sessions put on by HR at work - I swear I'm like the youngest person who goes to those haha. Learning about finances and investment vehicles is how I stumbled upon the world of cryptocurrencies, and that's how I found out about Steemit. So in a long chain of events, you could say that my reckless spending in college led me down a path of education and self-discovery that ultimately led me here! If I hadn't experienced such difficult times, I wouldn't be as motivated to keep learning. That's the silver lining I guess.

I think that's all for now. Say hi, or ask me anything :) I'm a very open and curious person. All photos are my own, I've published them as creative commons non-commercial at my photography blog EricTeske.com. I might pull a few over for summary articles or something, but I don't plan to copy and paste everything over. So far I think Steemit looks like a more interactive, more personal community, and I'm not here to just recycle old content.

Oh, I can't let you go without introducing you to my dogs, Zoey and Katie!

See ya round! -Eric